Loaded Dice
by Llamaesque
Summary: Ariadne was a whirlwind, he realized early on: Everything about her was changeable and malleable and movable.


Ariadne was a whirlwind, he realized early on: Everything about her was changeable and malleable and movable. Her only routine was being without a routine, eating cupcakes for breakfast and staying up all night to look for shooting stars, then riding an unknown train to the end of the line just to see what was there. She made Arthur crazy, on many levels.

"Maybe we can't manipulate the layout while we're in the dream, but out here we can do whatever we want." Ariadne stalked around the office, bristling with nervous energy. Her voice rose with every word she spoke, as if she were having trouble making herself heard over the din of a busy room. But it was just Arthur there, uncomfortably eyeing the model she had triumphantly set before him.

"Don't be ridiculous. It can't be done." He surreptitiously nudged the model backward, off the stack of papers he'd been examining before hurricane Ariadne had hit.

"Arthur, think about it. No matter what the world is designed to be, it will be the projections' native state. It's not that the dreams have to be like life—it's that the dreams _are_ life, while we're in them."

Arthur liked things tidy. The only dice he threw were loaded ones: He worked hard to be in control at all times, to know everything he needed to know and more, to have prepared for every imaginable (and not so imaginable) circumstance. This made him a great point man, but it also made him less than fond of improvisation. Of Ariadne.

"What did you build this from?" He poked the model, sending poorly secured edge pieces scattering.

"Popsicle sticks. I was with Jean Luc at this amazing antiquarian bookstore in Monmartre, and it just came to me." She was chewing nervously at the edge of one nail, her attention too fixed on the model to notice the face Arthur made in response. Jean Luc, all shaggy hair and paint-stained clothes, did not meet with Arthur's approval.

"That," he nodded toward the model, "will get you torn to shreds in no time flat."

"What's to lose? Come with me." She took his hand, an over-eager child looking forward to a forbidden carnival ride, rickety and dangerous and ultimately breathtaking. Up close she smelled like honeysuckle, he thought, a smell so powerful it was almost a taste.

"Okay." It took Arthur a moment to realize he'd spoken. But he had.

The dreamworld, like everything constructed by Ariadne, was brilliantly crisp and sharp—a thousand times more believable than even reality had any right to be. As far as he could see there were impossible stairs and curving arches and windows open to bright blue sky; it was like something by M. C. Escher, if M. C. Escher had spent the better part of his life on speed. The stairs were going nowhere, a confounding mishmash of styles and regions and eras that lasted forever in every direction. They rose and fell and coiled and hovered and seemed to explode into nothing, defying gravity and reason and fact. There were broad staircases of gleaming white marble and narrow black curlicues of wrought iron, giving way to rough-hewn logs and smooth stones that Arthur was sure would feel like silk to the touch.

And there were projections, coolly going about their business. Could Ariadne have been right? Could it be as simple as that?

"I told you, Arthur. I told you." From anyone else, this would have sounded like gloating. But from Ariadne, it was a marvel of Christmas mornings and happy endings, the guileless words of someone who never had a plan, but never seemed to fail.

"We'll see how long it lasts." He turned a full circle, surveying the staircases bleeding into the distance. "It will take a lot for a dreamer to sustain something as complicated as this."

"But it's your dream." Ariadne was spinning beside him, her eyes traveling from one staircase to the next, inventorying the clockwork world she'd dreamt into being. "If anyone can support this level of intricacy, it's Arthur Darling. Brains for days, that one." With a wink she pulled him onto the closest set of stairs, giant boulders in a staggered row, veined with what looked to be gold.

There was no center to this world, and as they put it through its paces Arthur kept those first stairs in the corner of his eye. Racing from one staircase to another, breathless as children, he and Ariadne were above the boulders, then below, then behind, twisting from one plane to another. Magnetic north dashed to pieces when every angle could be mastered, when upside down was rightside up and over was really under.

After what seemed like hours of motion they finally stopped to catch their breath next to one of the windows, a gothic arch that rose to improbable heights above them. "If nothing else, this will be good for some excellent games of hide and seek," Arthur gasped out between breaths, looking backward in a vain attempt to chart their course through the maze of staircases.

Her answer came with what he suspected to be an indulgent smile. "Not everything needs to be for something, you know. It's enough that some things just are."

Ariadne darted away, trailing her honeysuckle scent in her wake. "Catch me if you can!"

This, the projections took notice of. Above him and below him and beside him, they stopped as one, until the only sound was Ariadne's sneakers on wood/stone/bone as she moved through the never-ending labyrinth of staircases.

"Ariadne, come on. You're riling them up—" Arthur saw the projections snap to life, their suspicious eyes on her retreating form. Hundreds or thousands or millions of projections scattered far as the eye could see began to move toward her. If he didn't catch her soon, they would.

Following her wasn't easy. He passed through one staircase after another, always searching her out before changing paths or directions. He was dizzy and sweaty and tired, but too concerned to stop. When would the damn timer wake them up? Would he have to die here, at the hands of his own subconscious? Arthur felt beads of sweat rolling down his forehead.

And then there were hands on him, and he was sure that it was all over, that he was about to leave her alone here, rattling around in his head. But he turned to find Ariadne, flushed and breathless but smiling. "Some things just are," she whispered in his ear, her breath shivery hot on his neck. The projections were beginning to circle around them, enraged like extras in a zombie movie on late-night television. He saw their faces tighten with anger as they advanced, anonymous businesspeople and mothers and children hungry for their blood.

"Like this." Ariadne kissed him. A kiss that was like a dream of flying, of weightless release into freedom, of all the things he ever needed but could never understand.

As the projections finally reached them, hands grabbing and pulling and tearing, Arthur could only think one thing.

Maybe not every die needed to be loaded after all.


End file.
